Tapering will normally create less severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms but will spread them out over a prolonged period. Essentially, tapering provides less intense withdrawal symptoms but over a longer amount of time. Creating a tapering schedule you can stick with is a crucial part of weaning yourself off alcohol.
- It might help to set goals and reward yourself when you reach them.
- Stopping drinking abruptly can lead to seizures and can even be fatal.
- Further, the severity of withdrawal symptoms can cause a person to resort back to drinking alcohol to relieve any symptoms.
- If you want to change your relationship with alcohol, it’s important to have an honest conversation with a doctor about your drinking habits before you start tapering off.
- However, various strategies can help you cope with these symptoms and make the journey toward sobriety more manageable.
- Quitting binge drinking may require different strategies than either tapering or cold turkey.
- After about one week of detox, you can transition into inpatient treatment.
For example, one 12-ounce can of beer contains the same amount of alcohol as a 5-ounce glass of wine or a mixed drink containing 1.5 ounces of alcohol. For some drinkers, cutting down on the amount of alcohol they drink simply does not work. They may cut back for a short period of time, but they soon find themselves back to drinking at their usual level. This is especially true of heavy drinkers who are surrounded by the triggers that encourage drinking and lack the support needed to encourage change.
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The last thing you want is to run out of booze at three in the morning thinking you’re about to have a seizure. If you regularly drink a handle of liquor (around 40 standard drinks) or more per day, please seek professional help. Tapering is the process of gradually decreasing your consumption of a substance over time to lessen the withdrawal https://ecosoberhouse.com/ symptoms if you’re physically dependent. This is the same thing they’ll do if you go to a detox facility or hospital, except they’ll use medications instead of alcohol for the taper. It requires a lot of willpower and you will be uncomfortable, but it can be done. I know because I’ve done it and I’ve met others who have done it.
When you quit through tapering, you drink a little less each day until you’re able to have no alcohol at all. It can lower the severity of symptoms, and it can make you more likely to meet your goals. If you think you’re tapering too quickly, it’s okay to slow down. Just because you had 8 drinks instead of 6 one day doesn’t mean you’ve failed, especially if you still drank the same or less than the previous day. Maybe you just need to set more realistic goals for yourself and slow your taper. If you notice severe hallucinations, extreme brain fog, the world slows down around you; you feel drunk when you’re not, you may have warning signs of delirium tremens (DTs).
Can Tapering Down Alcohol Use Reduce Withdrawal Symptoms?
Always have one of your drinks late at night before you go to bed, to prevent this from happening while you’re sleeping. The chances of seizures and DTs are low if you’re tapering, but they happen even in controlled rehab environments. In this study on tapering with a benzo, about 1% of patients had a seizure after completing their taper. This does not, by any means, mean that you have a 1% chance of a seizure if you taper with alcohol according to the schedule above. The actual percentage could be significantly higher for tapering with alcohol. I couldn’t locate a study on people who tapered at home with alcohol, because it’s kind of hard to assess the topic, and no rehabs are detoxing people with alcohol.
Remember that you are not drinking for pleasure–you are drinking medicine–so only drink what is needed. If your BASELINE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION is less than 20 drinks per day then how to taper off alcohol we recommend reducing consumption by two standard drinks per day. Likewise if your average consumption is 6 standard drinks per day you can set a taper schedule of 4, 2, 0.
